The context of Manmohan Singh's comment was a question on the perception of him as a weak PM. It is evident that it is an image which disturbs him more than anything else.
It may be recalled that when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, L.K. Advani, used to raise this question of weakness before the 2009 general election, the prime minister responded by saying that he was not someone who cowered in a corner, as Advani did, while the saffron cadres demolished a protected monument. Following the jeering criticism, Advani had refrained from levelling the accusation again.
Now, faced with the latest invective against its poster-boy, the BJP rolled out its big guns - Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Ravi Shankar Prasad and others - to return the prime minister's fire.
Jaitley's view is that Manmohan Singh lowered the dignity of the prime minister's office by saying that it will be "disastrous" for the country if Modi becomes the prime minister. The BJP claims that such accusations are pointless when Modi has been exonerated by the judiciary.
But, what the BJP misses is that the war of words is not a legal, but a political skirmish. In any event, the Congress appears to have decided to reiterate its "maut ka saudagar" (merchant of death) taunt which it directed at Modi before the 2007 Gujarat assembly elections.
What the latest exchanges have done is to liven up the poll campaign because the belief till now has been that the Congress is wary of reviving the riots issue lest it consolidates the Hindu vote behind Modi. However, it is possible that the erosion which he faces of his support base by the Aam Admi Party (AAP) has persuaded the Congress to take on the BJP's prime ministerial candidate more aggressively.
Apart from the prime minister's unusual show of spirit, he stuck to the beaten path with anodyne, even evasive, answers. His claim, for instance, that it was the government's first term between 2004 and 2009 which saw most of the corruption cases was erroneous considering that the former telecom minister Andimuthu Raja's arrest and the Commonwealth Games scam erupted from 2010 onwards.
